by Heather Dobbins

No one my age hasn’t smelled death before.
Down by the rail beds and Devil’s Weed, the tracks stand on their sides
like fences. Receding waters means a dozen bodies

are lined up. Suitors. Soldiers. Husbands, maybe mine.
Broken levee speed, current carrying a new darkness, mud weight.
The smell of what we’ve come to claim is another animal.

These weeks, there has been my ring and the shoes he gave me,
leather waiting to dry, the hems just browning again after I dress.
Today, will there be any of me remaining after I look down into mud?

The living walk in a line. Our job is to recognize who we can, but
there are so many. I don’t know if I ever saw them without a hat.
Aren’t any hats here. Waiting prayers are desperate, but where

does the seen go but inside? Remember the old joke? What has
four eyes but cannot see? What the Mississippi sees is forever.
I want to stay a young bride. I want to sew a baptism dress,

have barbecues where we all wear white. What do I say to the man
with a long list and a pen but our courting song years ago? Yes, sir,
that’s my baby. No, sir, I don’t mean maybe. Yes, Sir, that’s my baby

now. Bravery is looking down at what I can’t see. River lungs. Mud
tongue. His stomach swole up with his own decay. I nod.
My teeth tear into my handkerchief to swallow the sound.

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Heather Dobbins is a native of Memphis, Tennessee. She is the author of two poetry collections, In the Low Houses (2014) and River Mouth (2017), both from Kelsay Press. She graduated from the College Scholars program at the University of Tennessee and earned her M.F.A. from Bennington College. Her poems and poetry reviews have been published in Beloit Poetry Journal, Fjords, The Rumpus, TriQuarterly Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others. For twenty years, she has worked as an educator (kindergarten through college) in Oakland, California; Memphis, Tennessee; and currently, Fort Smith, Arkansas. Please see heatherdobbins.net for more.